The present invention relates to a solid-state image pickup apparatus.
Conventional color image pickup apparatus such as television cameras comprises a plurality of dichroic color separation mirror prisms. These prisms are arranged so that the separated color images undergo no reflection or two reflections so that they coincide in orientation and that the separated images travel equal path lengths to associated solid-state area imagers. One shortcoming of the prior art is that the use of dichroic mirror prisms results in an expensive camera. A further shortcoming is that a long-focus viewing lens must be employed with the dichroic prisms which results in a heavy and bulky camera.